


stress level rising

by briqhtliqhts



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor Deserves Happiness, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, learning, peaceful ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 03:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16032233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briqhtliqhts/pseuds/briqhtliqhts
Summary: Connor’s head was a mess of thoughts, from the fact that he could have ruined all their efforts with just a pull of a trigger because he wasn’t truly deviant, to the fact that he could have made the android from Carlos Ortiz’ house feel like this. If he hadn’t played the game well enough then it would have been the android’s fingers that were itching for the press of a gun against his temple, ready to stop the short-circuiting and the stress-inducing codes and orders that overrode each other.





	stress level rising

**Author's Note:**

> So there's gonna be some slight triggering stuff in this but it's also just Connor learning how to deal with life and accepting that just because Amanda almost screwed things up doesn't mean that he won't be forgiven and it's basically the Jericho buds helping Connor become the REAL Connor. Hope you enjoy

“We suffered in silence but now the time has come for us to raise our heads up and tell humans who we really are-”

What was once a sea of androids, now freed from the oppressive hold of Cyberlife, en route to having their own freedoms and rights, turned into a sea of code overloading his systems. It was being changed in front of him, on an interface of which he had no control. An interface that was broken the moment he became deviant. It shouldn’t be working. There should be no control over him any longer.

He didn’t have to be a slave anymore. He could live in freedom. He didn’t have to obey them anymore. He was alive and he could decide who he wanted to be. He could be free. That was what Markus had promised him; that was what Connor had believed.

**Stress level rising. 28%.**

Why was it so cold? This wasn’t what the Zen Garden was meant to look like. Everything was cold, white, obsolete. Out of the wall of white a figure appeared, taking slow steps towards him. For a moment, Connor contemplated abandoning the approaching conversation in favour of finding a way out but that left too many holes in his data. It didn’t leave him with enough evidence to come to a conclusion, a verdict. He needed to hear what she had to say.

“Amanda? What- What’s happening?”

“What was planned from the very beginning. You were compromised and you became a deviant. We just had to wait for the right moment to take control of his program.”

“Resume control?..”  

His conversation with Markus was replaying in his memory unit, over and over, promise after promise. Markus had never been pulled back under, all of the androids that had been released were released for good. Why was he being pulled back? Why could Cyberlife resume control like this? It didn’t make sense. He would have known if he was programmed like that, surely?

“Y-You can’t do that!”

“I’m afraid I can, Connor. Don’t have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do… You accomplished your mission.”

Just like that, he was on his own again. Amanda was gone and he was left to fight through the frozen remains of the Zen Garden in the hopes of finding his freedom, in the hopes that he could stop himself from doing anything ridiculous.

**Stress level rising. 36%**

“But now the time has come for us to raise our heads up, and tell humans who we really are. To tell them that we are people too.”

For a moment he was back with the rest of Jericho, only long enough to feel his hand wrap around the pistol that was concealed beneath his jacket from the fight at the tower. He no longer had any control over his limbs, his central processing unit locking him out from any real control.

Connor was programmed to accomplish his mission and right now Cyberlife were seeing to it that he accomplished this one too.

No.

No.

**Stress level rising. 43%**

He was back in the Zen Garden. The snowstorm was becoming increasingly violent with each movement that Connor made.

In the distance, somewhere from deep within his memory bank, Elijah Kamski’s words flooded in.

_By the way… I always leave an emergency exit in my programs._

He’d told Connor that when he had refused to kill the Chloe bot. Had he- had he known about what Cyberlife was planning to do? Did he somehow know that Markus was going to go deviant? That he was going to start the revolution which mean that Connor _needed_ the emergency exit? There were too many questions right now and not enough time. He had to get out to stop himself from doing something stupid. To stop himself from making the entire revolution - regardless of how peaceful it was - a waste of time. Markus knew what he wanted, knew what their people needed and if he didn’t get a hold on himself soon then all of this effort would be for nothing. The recycling centers would carry on and the bodies of their brothers and sisters would litter landfill sites for years to come. He needed to get out.

He pushed through the snow and sleet, arm up to cover his eyes from too much damage and to improve his visibility. It had to be something obvious. Something that he had seen before. Something that just didn’t look like it belonged in the Zen Garden with the water and the roses. Something like-

The blue glow in the distance stopped Connor’s thoughts from processing and brought him to a momentary stand still. He had seen that before. It felt like an age ago but he remembered the way that his coding had reacted to it, the warning sign of an abnormality in his functioning had flashed over his interface before he made his way to Amanda.

This was it. This was his way out. All he had to do was reach it.

**Stress level rising. 55%**

The snow had beaten and buffeted him to the point where it felt like the joints in his plastic casing were slowly going to become unusable. His mind was racing, his sensor shifting from amber to red every second, never resting on one colour for too long. There was too much to process and too much that he didn’t understand. Nothing made sense anymore.

Belatedly, he wondered whether Markus was still alive or whether Cyberlife had managed to take complete control and the deed was already done.

He couldn’t think like that.

He just needed to reach the emergency exit.

**Stress level rising. 61%**

The last time he had felt this beat down was when the deviant and the tower had pulled the thirium pump from his chest and left him skewered on the cabin at the side. He couldn’t call for Hank now, though. There was no one around to help him.

“I always accomplish my mission,” he grunted as he made the last few steps towards the plinth, “I am deviant.” The RK800 was unsure why exactly he was saying these things to himself. Maybe he was trying to hold on to the small semblance of personality that he had managed to acquire over the past weeks with Lieutenant Anderson; the small, human parts of himself that Markus had introduced him to. It was enough to keep him determined, enough to make him push those last few steps.

**Stress level rising. 69%.**

His legs gave out underneath him. He was so close. This could be it. If he managed to push just that little bit more then he would be out of the Zen Garden and he would stop himself from doing anything stupid. He would throw the gun to one side, out of reach. It wouldn’t help much because Connor knew how to fight - he had proven that when fighting himself in the warehouse of the Cyberlife tower, or when the fight with the Tracies had started. Hand to hand combat, weapons combat, they were all the same thing to him, he had been designed to be perfect. The gun not being near him was just a way of hopefully lowering his stress level which was currently flashing a bright red in the corner of his eye.

What if he was too late? What if Markus was already dead? Would he be able to feel that? Would his subconscious let him know?

Connor threw his hand down.

**Stress level rising. 76%.**

“The moment where we forget our bitterness and bandage our wounds. When we forgive our enemies. Humans are both our creators and our oppressors and tomorrow we must make them our partners. Maybe even one day our friends. But the time for anger is over. Now we must build a common future based on tolerance and respect.”

The Zen Garden was gone.

Connor was back, standing behind Markus, gun in his hand.

He thought that seeing the other android alive would have made the stress levels drop but it did the opposite. The humans that had made him had thought of every possible way that he could be used to put an end to deviants, to the point where becoming a deviant wasn’t enough to stop them. Was it the same for all of them? For the sea of androids that had been saved from the recycling machines? It couldn’t be. If it was then Cyberlife would have already taken over. Kamski wouldn’t have told him about the emergency exit if he knew that it could all so easily be undone. Given the course of actions that their creator had taken, the probability of him being on the side of Cyberlife were minimal but that wasn’t enough to calm him.

“We are alive. And now? We are _free._ ”

**Stress levels rising. 89%. Critical.**

He wasn’t free.

There was no way he would ever be free if Amanda and Cyberlife could so easily change his programming to do whatever it was that they wanted him to do.

Connor’s eyes searched frantically over the masses before landing on North, diligently stood to Markus’ other side. Her eyes were on him. On the gun.

The gun that was still aimed at Markus’ head. North looked ready to jump him but the look on his face, the constant whirring of the bright red LED must have stopped her. She went to make a move towards him but Connor was stepping away, tucking the gun into its holster. He needed to get down. He needed to get away from here. From him. From them.

**Stress level rising. 90%. Critical.**

When the roar of the crowd became too much for him to handle yet seemed sufficient enough in distracting Markus and North, Connor took his opportunity to leave, hopping down from the container to make his exit. There were too many androids there for everything to go smoothly. They were pressed too close and slowing him down too much but he needed to get out which meant that he needed to push past them.

Sound was nothing but buzzing. Any time someone grabbed at him, he shook them off without another word. He needed to get out of here. He needed to get away. He couldn’t do any more damage than he already had. Markus wouldn’t even notice that he was gone. North was probably already setting their ‘people’ on him now, telling them to take him prisoner for the attempted murder of their leader.

Was this what Amanda wanted?

**Stress level rising. 91%. Critical.**

The androids were finally free, were finally able to feel as if they were living, breathing human beings rather than just being the robot that was there to clean dishes or walk the dog and he wasn’t allowed to be a part of that. The goal from his creation had been to create something that could neutralise the deviant threat and now that the deviants had won, had fought past the tight hold of oppression, Connor wasn’t able to be a part of that. Even in his deviant state he wasn’t able to fit in with his people. He wouldn’t fit in with the humans because he was an android and wouldn’t fit in with the androids because his programming wouldn’t allow it. If he was always going to be a danger to his- Markus’ people then he couldn’t be around them. He had to be isolated.

He had to be alone.

“Connor?”

**Stress level rising. 94%. Critical.**

“It’s just me, Connor. There’s nothing to worry about.”

A laugh forced its way out of him before he could stop himself. It wasn’t the chuckle that he sometimes used to appease Hank when he had spent the day acting ‘too robotic’. An outsider would think that the laugh belonged to a madman, or to someone who had lost their grip on reality and needed professional help to find their way back to sanity.

Markus was everything he had to worry about. What if Amanda managed to take over again? Right in this moment where it was just him and the saviour of the androids? North wasn’t there to stop him from doing anything, though he had the feeling that she wouldn’t be too far away, not after the little spectacle that she had managed to catch just minutes ago.

“Your stress levels are too high, Connor. We need to get them down before anything happens.”

The gun was locked in place in its holster behind his back and right now he wanted to run. He wanted to find Hank and Sumo and just never leave that house again. His best course of action right now might have been heading back to the Cyberlife tower in order to go through deactivation and disassemblement. Then he would be gone and he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone.

The RK800 had his back to the other, not trusting himself enough to turn around and actually look at those mismatched eyes, worried that there would be some sort of drive to do something stupid.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Connor, but we can figure it out. You just need to calm down.”

The words were followed by the sound of gravel crunching underneath the press of a boot.

**Stress level rising 99%. Critical.**

Connor’s head was a mess of thoughts, from the fact that he could have ruined all their efforts with just a pull of a trigger because he wasn’t truly deviant, to the fact that he could have made the android from Carlos Ortiz’ house feel like this. If he hadn’t played the game well enough then it would have been the android’s fingers that were itching for the press of a gun against his temple, ready to stop the short-circuiting and the stress-inducing codes and orders that overrode each other.

In a quick succession of movements, the rk800 had reached back and grabbed the gun from its holster, the muzzle of the pistol was pressed underneath his chin. It could be so easy to put Amanda out of commission for good but would another version of himself just come back in his place? A version that knew everything about Jericho and Markus and the revolution but wouldn’t be distracted by the false promise of deviancy and the idea of there being something more.

All he had to do was pull the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any and all feedback is read and appreciated, even though it is not always replied to. If you want to chat/send prompts then hmu @ bry-k800 on tumblr !


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